Almost every dangerous curve on a highway has some sort of a crash barrier or guardrail intended to keep an out-of-control vehicle on the highway right-of-way. After a crash, such a barrier is often sufficiently damaged to require repair in order to restore its strength to try to save the next unlucky driver.
Most factories that have indoor vehicular traffic have crash barriers to confine the vehicles to designated paths and to keep them out of areas where they are not wanted. Unless such a barrier has been exceedingly overdesigned for the weight and expected speed of the vehicles used in the factory, in time the barriers will become bent, twisted, loose from the factory floor, and otherwise deformed so as to impair their appearance and probably even impair their effectiveness.
Hand railings and other edge supports are usually placed on stairwells and ramps for the support and safety of pedestrians using those facilities. If hand trucks and perhaps larger vehicles also use those facilities, the railings, etc., must either be seriously overdesigned for pedestrian purposes or will in time become bent and deformed from impacts by the much heavier, and less yielding wheeled vehicles.
Therefore, what is needed is a low-cost barrier, guardrail, or hand railing system which can receive and shrug off, without permanent deformation, the inevitable, occasional impacts from vehicles, without the need for massive overdesign of the barrier system, while maintaining a clean and neat appearance.